By DENNIS SWIBOLD

The best intern hunter I've known was Jim Strauss, former editor and now publisher of the Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune, who consistently skimmed some of the best talent in the University of Montana's School of Journalism.

It started every winter with a call asking us to spread the word of his visit, which entailed a 400-mile round trip, often on snow-packed two-lane roads across the Continental Divide.

He insisted on cover letters and clips in advance so he could prep for his face-to-face interviews that sounded more like breezy conversations. The questions flowed both ways and often ranged beyond the applicant's resume.

His day on campus ended with pizza and talk with photographers, reporters and editors of the student daily as they geared up for the next day's issue. His choices usually were made by the time he called faculty to confirm his observations.

Strauss won more than his share of interns, and many became pillars of his staff. In talking with good recruiters across the country, it seems his success was no fluke.

"At smaller papers, it's all in the picking," says Bill Elsen, a consultant and former director for recruiting and hiring for the Washington Post. "You've got to know what you're getting before they get to the paper."

Strauss insisted on meeting applicants in person. His best questions were open-ended ones designed to discover a student's passion for journalism and not just for writing, designing or taking photographs.

Recruiters can learn a lot by having students talk about their best work and how it came about, says Elsen. For starters, they can determine how much of it was done by editors. But more often the question leads to what excites a candidate or reveals "how their brain works, how they go from A to Z without going all over the map."

"I think a lot of it is seeing how gung-ho they are, especially today, with all the things they may be asked to do," he says.

Billy Weeks, photo and graphics editor for the Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times Free Press, agrees that gauging an applicant's interest is everything. For him, non-starters are applicants whose portfolios are filled with work that isn't journalism or who can't explain why they want the job beyond the fact that they like to take pictures.

Clips or photos that showcase a candidate's technical skills or familiarity with a range of subjects don't always show what really makes them tick, he adds.

"If they have a choice of sending four or five good photographs in different subjects, or four or five of their really good photos, I say send the really good ones," Weeks says. "Always send the best you have."

Weeks also looks for evidence that applicants know about his paper, his community and prevailing ethical and professional controversies. Questions about a student's interests outside journalism often reveal talents that assigning editors can put to use down the road.

Elsen encourages editors to consider applicants whose take on the news is smart but different, the "oddball."

"I hate to say that," he says, "but at the Post we wanted people who look at things differently. I'd ask them what they do in their down time. What you don't want to hear is that all they do is work."

Hiring interns is one thing; ensuring a successful internship is another. Editors who merely throw students in the fray usually get what they deserve.

Internships are about teaching, and that takes time, a scarce commodity today as editors respond to shrinking staffs and other resources. "I can just see some city editor-type rolling his eyes when the interns show up," Elsen says. "It's just one more thing he has to do."

Editors should expect that interns can handle basic assignments, meet deadlines, search the Internet, know the rudiments of style and understand the fundamental ethics of their profession. But interns have expectations, too. Most need more than a quick lesson in who's who in the newsroom and how the computer system works. They need to grow.

"The main purpose of an internship is growth, not production," says Joe Grimm, recruiting and development editor at the Detroit Free Press. "Interns and editors should be united in their understanding of what the growth goals are. Interns are a big help – and want to be – but should acquire new skills during their internship. In many cases, those skills might be the vast variety of things a person learns just working in a professional newsroom."

Assigned mentors are essential. Ideally, they should do a job similar to the intern's and be someone other than a supervisor, someone interns can feel comfortable asking how the newsroom really works or to "tell them how to get the lights turned on in their apartment," says Elsen.

But there's no escaping a supervisor's obligation to teach.

Chattanooga's Weeks goes so far as to assign readings that range from biographies of famous photojournalists to textbooks on technique. He meets with interns regularly to discuss how they can apply what they've read to their assignments.

Weeks also insists that interns meet with him briefly each morning to go over the day's assignments. "Most of the time they seek me out," he says. "They say, ‘This is what I have today. What do you think?' "

Such meetings, only minutes in most cases, are critical to an intern's day-to-day success, says Kortny Rolston, city editor for Idaho's Post Register in Idaho Falls.

"I try to meet my interns every morning to discuss which stories they're working on and to coach them through any problems up front," she says. "That way we're not trying to fix major problems with stories on deadline."

If there's time, Rolston adds, have interns watch as editors comb through their work. It's a great opportunity to teach and deal with problems that arise as interns tackle increasingly complex stories.

"This also prevents editors from just ‘fixing' copy, which we tend to do when we get busy," she says. "Sometimes it's necessary, but most of the time it's counterproductive. No one learns from it."

Weeks sees his job as providing an environment that allows interns to succeed, and that means knowing them and their skills well enough to avoid problems.

"I don't want to put them into a situation they can't handle," he says.

An intern's growth also depends on honest but constructive criticism, says Elsen, and that includes telling them what they're doing well, something editors sometimes fail to do.

It's all good advice. I'd only add that another way to increase the expectations for interns is to pay them, but perhaps that's a minor point as some newspapers continue to cut recruiting budgets or slash internships altogether.

I'm with Elsen, who thinks that's a big mistake.

"It's your future," he says.

Dennis Swibold oversees internships and teaches reporting and editing courses at the University of Montana's School of Journalism. His is a former managing editor of the Bozeman (Mont.) Daily Chronicle and the author of "Copper Chorus: Mining, Politics, and the Montana Press: 1889-1959."